Fine dining

In Mong Kok, on the same street as Mr. Wong's, there's the cheapest Michelin star restaurant in the world. Or at least that's what people say. We went there on Friday with Sandra, her sister, and her sister's husband around 1PM, and I honestly thought there would be no queue at that time, but seems like there is always people waiting outside to get in. We got a waiting number and the waiter told we'd get in after about 1,5 hours, so we decided to walk around a bit and then came back to wait for our turn. In the evenings it's almost always full, you have to be there really early to be able to get a seat. The restaurant is very tiny so there's no chance to get in with a big group.

People waiting for their turn to get some Michelin star dim sum

Residents drying their clothes above a Michelin star restaurant

A very fancy menu

While waiting you can choose what to order from the menu and then when stepping in you give the paper to the waiter. There's dim sum (steamed dishes), rice, vermicelli, and deep fried dishes available, everything around HKD15 - 25. When we got in, they first put us sitting in different corners of the restaurant, because there was no place for 4, but when some people left we got to sit next to each other :'D The restaurant is so unpretentious, just a small family-business-like room with no space to move. It looked like they hadn't changed a thing after getting a Michelin star, everything was very simple. Probably what had happened is that the restaurant was just like any dim sum place in Hong Kong with no big ambitious plans on growing, and then some Michelin dude came in and liked it a lot, and suddenly the number of customers just exploded...

And the food - well, it's very good. I've had dim sum quite a few times and this was definitely the best one I've had so far. The prices are very good, we got 11 dishes and paid HKD50 each (5 euros). Not a bad deal for a Michelin star restaurant! The only minus in this place is that because it's so small and popular, the staff is trying to make you leave as soon as you've had your last bite, so it's not a very relaxing restaurant experience. But an experience anyway.

Mong Kok has so many gun shops and weird army stuff

The Paeaejaervi sisters :)

Certificates say it's a good restaurant.

That's pretty much it, there's seats for about 20 people in there.

Rainy days in Hong Kong

Sticker shop

One month of school left! I can't believe how fast time goes by. Inka and Jenny will fly here after Christmas, we'll spend a week in Hong Kong together and on the 3rd of January we're off to the Philippines. It's great not to have specific plans, so far the only thing we know is that we'll travel to Indonesia at some point, and I have to be back in Austria in the end of February. Two fantastic months ahead of us in southeast Asia.

I'm not sure if I have told this here before, but I've come to the conclusion that I absolutely love Hong Kong. Few weeks ago I was almost bored with the city, but now I've started to love it again, and even more than in the beginning. Yesterday it was raining almost the whole day, I didn't have any school, so in the afternoon I went walking around and took pictures. First I took a bus to Jordan Station, picked up my student Octopus card, then started walking on Nathan Road towards Mong Kok. The rain wasn't heavy at all. I saw so many interesting buildings and people and lights and foods and restaurants and shops and clothes... Hong Kong is so photogenic and fascinating. It's an endless stream of interesting details and small moments I wish I could all get filmed. As I said in my very first post from Hong Kong, the vibe is what appeals to me the most, the energy and the atmosphere are so different from any other place.

If you don't believe me, click HERE to watch a beautiful video clip filmed in this awesome city. I've seen it so many times, and every time it makes me appreciate this opportunity to be here and live here :)

One more reason to love Hong Kong; take away sushi for HKD3 a piece (0,30 euros)

Scene from our room window

One of the only places in the city where you can hear birds singing

Soy Street :''D

Market in Mong Kok

Gingerbread latte from Starbucks brought Christmas to me!

Shang-high V

What else happened in Shanghai?

We saw the Bund also in the dark.

We took photos of buildings that looked almost like Europe.

We went to a tailor market and I got a custom-made traditional Chinese dress.
This picture is just outside the tailor shops.

And this as well.

We played beer pong with two amazingly annoying guys.

We ate at a restaurant in a same room with about 40 drunk, chain-smoking Chinese people.

We went for dinner with Eevi and ate salmiakki.

We went to Shanghai Design factory to see Eevi's school mates.
The design factory is inspired by the one in Otaniemi.

There's one design factory in Melbourne, one in Shanghai, and the original one in Otaniemi (NOT IN HELSINKI!).

We were hanging out with a bunch of Finnish students who went to a Finnish sauna on the rooftop of the school.

We relaxed in the elevator.

We ate GREAT Japanese food which was cooked in front of our eyes.
Cheap and good. So good.

And I had the worst airplane meal of my life! Seriously, why do you serve food at all if you do it so badly?

That was pretty much it...

Shang-high IV: Zhouzhuang

Our pink life-saver

I didn't even remember how frustrating it can be to travel somewhere and not to understand any of the language, or not being able to speak it at all. In Shanghai it was still easy, metro stations were written in English as well and restaurant menus had awkward but almost understandable translations for the foods (fried drunk husband being one of the dishes). But as soon as you get out of the city, everything becomes much much more difficult.

On Saturday we wanted to visit an old water town outside Shanghai, and after googling a bit we thought the way there sounded relatively easy. We asked the receptionist of our hostel to write our destination Zhouzhuang on a paper in Mandarin, and he checked from the Internet how to take the public transport there, and wrote that down as well. He said it should take us around 2 hours one-way and in the morning we were being very optimistic that we could really get there in such a short time... Well. In the end it took us seven hours from our hostel to Zhouzhuang, which is quite a long way for a one-day trip destination. We showed our little pink Mandarin note probably to 30 people during that day, and still we had no clue where we were or where we were supposed to be.

The bus station somewhere outside Shanghai

I will save you from a long description about how it was possible it took us so long to get there. Anyway at one point we were at a bus station where nobody spoke English and all the signs were in Chinese. People were staring at us, pointing at us and laughing at us, and it felt weird. Especially when adults stare at you so openly it's kind of confusing. Sandra and I were sitting outside a restaurant, being extremely frustrated about the whole trip and being so lost, when a Chinese cook working in the restaurant kitchen pointed at us through the glass window. A few seconds later, a boy around 2 or 3 years old came out of the restaurant and was looking around, obviously searching for something. He looked back at this man through the window to say that "I can't see it!", when the man pointed at us again, and this little boy turned around and saw us. It's very likely that we were the first non-Chinese people he had ever seen, because his reaction was so strong; he started laughing and got very shy and shocked but at the same time excited and ran fast back to the restaurant, the cooks watching from inside and laughing at this scene. The little boy and his reaction was one of the cutest and most genuine things I've seen in such a long time. Even now when I think about the situation it makes me smile, so funny that just our looks can get a little boy so confused :)

Finally in Zhouzhuang!

Actually Sandra was on a good mood. I just had a very good timing with this one.

A woman spreading poop.

You see the sun through the smog?

Sandra hates cats. Cats love Sandra.

This is China.

Zhouzhuang was absolutely beautiful. Full of tourists, but extremely interesting to see, and once you find an empty street you can really imagine what life there was like when the town was built some 800 years ago. And even though our way there took long and was frustrating at times, all in all it was a great experience to see some of the countryside as well, and we passed huge industrial areas in grey smoggy towns. Those factories are probably the ones where all that "Made in China" stuff comes from.

In the evening there were no buses going back to Shanghai, so we had to take a taxi. And guess how long it took us this time instead of 7 hours? Only 1 hour and 20 minutes! Haha.

I love the Chinese public transport system... So fast and convenient. Not. :)